


the evidence adds up

by wistfulwatcher



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Humor, Sappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3984481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wistfulwatcher/pseuds/wistfulwatcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Yeah? Well you clearly don’t live to pick up your socks,” she teases, and points to it sticking out.</p><p>“What is it with you Griffin ladies and anal retentiveness,” she mutters, and makes no move to pick up the sock. Clarke’s brows furrow at the weird smile on Raven’s face, but she scoots herself over until she can reach the sock and tug it free.</p><p>Only, it’s not a sock. “Uh, Raven?” She holds up the leg warmer—the very<i> familiar <i></i></i>leg warmer—and raises her brows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the evidence adds up

Clarke is smart. Brilliant, really. And curious, and observant, and just a bit obsessive. It means she’s good at figuring things out, made her a good leader when the hundred first landed. (It’s also the reason she was in the position to be on the dropship in the first place, but that’s neither here nor there.) **  
**

So it’s a little embarrassing for her to admit just how long it takes her to figure out what’s going on.

(And why she really,  _really_  wishes she could unlearn it.)

 

**exhibit a.**

It’s the beginning of summer and Clarke has been back from her little post-Mount Weather sabbatical for a few weeks. The days are getting longer and hotter and so she’s spread out on the floor of Raven’s room, smiling at the feel of the cool metal surface against her skin. **  
**

“I am certain I speak for the rest of our people when I say thank you for getting us air conditioning,” she moans.

“I live to serve,” Raven says dryly, and drops her tool box down by the end of the bed.

Clarke looks over at it ready to berate her for being so loud—the large metal case having fallen a tad too close to her ears,  _Raven_ —when she catches sight of something peeking out beneath the bed.

“Yeah? Well you clearly don’t live to pick up your socks,” she teases, and points to it sticking out.

“What is it with you Griffin ladies and anal retentiveness,” she mutters, and makes no move to pick up the sock. Clarke’s brows furrow at the weird smile on Raven’s face, but she scoots herself over until she can reach the sock and tug it free.

Only, it’s not a sock. “Uh, Raven?” She holds up the leg warmer—the  _very_   _familiar_  leg warmer—and raises her brows.

“What?” she asks, and when she looks down at Clarke beside the bed her face falls a little, lips parting slightly. “Oh. Uh. Thanks.” She reaches down and pulls it from Clarke’s hand before tossing it in her bag beside the door. “Your mom loaned me those the other day when I was working with the air conditioning. Gets pretty cold, you know?” Raven turns back, and slips her hands in her back pockets. “So, we gonna grab some dinner?”

 

**exhibit b.**

Hunting isn’t her favorite thing to do, but since she took off for so long, Clarke hasn’t earned back anyone’s trust yet to do any of the political heavy lifting. So that means she’s stuck with a lot more of the manual labor to be done in the camp. Which, of course, she understands. It’s just hard.

It’s even harder when her mom says she’ll tag along, and Clarke is in no position to refuse. She hasn’t been avoiding Abby, not exactly, but it’s clear her mom was hurt—is hurt—by Clarke leaving. Again, she understands. But it had to be done, for her own sanity and to save all of her relationships, and so she’s not really looking to apologize for it, either.

So, things between them have been somewhat icy.

“It’s hard picturing you hunting,” Clarke finally says, when her mom is being too quiet beside her.

“After Mount Weather,” she says it slowly, but doesn’t pause, “it was pretty much all hands on deck. We didn’t do anything off site until we’d healed, but then we started to join the rest of the camp.”

For a moment it’s just the sound of lightly crunching leaves beneath their feet. “We?” Clarke asks, a bit confused by the pronoun.

Abby looks over quickly, and then looks straight ahead, nods tightly. “Raven. Raven and I. We had similar recovery patterns,” is all she says, before she slows down a little to fall into step with the rest of their party.

 

**exhibit c.**

They’re having a bonfire, a big one, and it’s a party. Raven tells her it’s because they’ve secured a truce with the Boat People. It’s the kind of thing Clarke would have known first, had she not run away for three months.

They’ve got music blasting, and pretty soon Raven’s dragging Clarke toward the area where people are dancing, and Clarke can’t help but smile at the way Raven is flicking her ponytail as she finishes off a cup of Monty’s moonshine. (Clarke’s not sure where the Council has landed on the legality of his alcohol, but Raven’s not exactly hiding it.)

“Abby!” She yells right by Clarke’s ear, and she winces, laughing at Raven’s behaviour. When she looks over her shoulder she can see her mom fighting a smile, and shaking her head at Raven. “C’mon!” she yells again, and then she’s handing Clarke her empty glass and running the twenty feet to get to Abby.

Clarke watches them talk a moment, and then Raven takes Abby by the wrist and drags her over to Clarke. “…better be your last glass,” Abby gestures to the cup in Clarke’s hand, and Raven just smiles before starting to bounce up and down in time to the music. Her tone is teasing, light, not like when she used to be firm with Clarke.

Abby watches Raven a moment, her smile finally breaking through, before she pulls her focus over to Clarke. “Having fun, Clarke?” she asks, the hurt look Clarke has gotten used to seeing lately, gone. It makes her feel lighter, forgiven, and she smiles down at the cup in her hand.

“Yeah, hell of a party,” she fake toasts, and Abby smiles a little before she catches sight of Raven and Monty dancing, and her smile grows wider.

 

**exhibit d.**

Clarke’s been working more with engineering lately, starting to train in to some kind of role now that she’s been back for nearly a month. It’s a nice change from the more mindless tasks, but honestly she’s a little exhausted by being with people so much after the months of solitude.

So she’s pretty much content to sit alone in the dining hall, picking at her plate as she decompresses.

“Hey, princess,” Bellamy’s low voice sounds behind her, and then he drops into the seat next to her. He’s been training with the soldiers—led by Octavia and Lincoln, mostly—lately, and she hasn’t gotten to see much of him. It’s bittersweet; she still can’t look at him without thinking about what they’d done and how she’d left.

Bellamy digs into his plate, and Clarke picks at hers for a moment before she asks, “How’s training?”

“O’s a real hard ass,” he says as he chews, but he’s smiling like the proud big brother he is. “Raven was out by us fixing some of the external electrical the other day, and she made her leave because Raven started to comment on the sparring rounds.”

A smile twitches at her lips, and she pushes her tray away to lean on her elbows. “Must have been great. Hey, have you seen her lately? I’ve been looking for her all day.”

“Raven?” he asks, and at Clarke’s nod he shrugs. “Yeah, I saw her talking to your mom down in Medical this morning,” he finishes his bite and holds up a bandaged forearm with an obnoxious smile.

Rolling her eyes, Clarke takes a bite of her meat and chews it slowly. “That’s weird. They’ve been spending a lot of time together,” Clarke says, and Bellamy kind of chokes beside her.

“Yeah,” he gets out coarsely, and looks at her out of the corner of his eye, a little shifty. “They’ve gotten pretty close.”

 

**exhibit e.**

“What do they talk about?” Clarke asks one night, sitting outside around the campfire. They don’t need the heat, it’s been humid all day, but there’s something familiar about it, the crackle of the fire as she sits with Octavia and Lincoln.

“Who?” Octavia asks, and leans forward to reach her cup before she settles back against Lincoln. Clarke gestures with her chin to her mom and Raven, sitting on a rock a hundred feet away, and turns back to her friends. “Oh,” Octavia says, a little taken aback. “I don’t know,” she shrugs, and Lincoln curls his fingers over Octavia’s knee in support. “They spent a lot of time together in Medical after Mount Weather.”

Octavia is the only person these days that doesn’t hesitate over the name, doesn’t get squirrely when she mentions it to Clarke. It’s nice.

“I guess they just bonded,” she adds, and smiles when she looks over at them.

Clarke doesn’t like to think about what they might have bonded over; that it might have been her. That it wasn’t.

Lincoln stays silent, but there’s something soft in his expression when he makes eye contact with Clarke.

 

**exhibit f.**

It’s mid-summer and what feels like a full on heat wave. Raven can’t keep up with the requests to fix the air conditioner units, so Clarke is sitting by the waterfall—the safe one, no Octavia-biting-eel in sight—with her legs in the river.

“Hey,” Raven says as she comes up beside her, and starts to kick off her shoes. “I hate everyone right now.”

Clarke smiles. “That sounds about right,” she scoots over on the rock so Raven can sit, but instead she sees her jump straight into the water.

“Ah,” she sighs, and takes her drenched shirt off to wring it out. “Really missing the temperature controlled, fully-functioning Ark back in space, right about now.”

Clarke looks off. It’s a light comment, a joke, but so much has happened on the ground, she’s loved and lost so many people, she just can’t think about the simplicity of the Ark without it hurting.

“Though this is nice, too,” Raven adds, and wades over until she can lean back against the rock Clarke’s sitting on.

They stay in silence for a bit, Clarke kicking her feet against the slow current and Raven dunking down under the water when she starts to dry.

“You ready to talk about it, yet?” Raven asks, and Clarke knows what she means, that she means any of it: Lexa, Mount Weather, leaving, coming back.

“Nope,” is all she says, but she looks over at Raven, smiles softly at her friend, at the way she cares but doesn’t push.

Raven slicks her hair back from her face and then over the shoulder away from Clarke, and her eyes widen. “Jesus, Raven, what the hell happened?”

Her hair sprays water droplets as Raven jerks her head to look at Clarke. “What?”

“Your neck,” Clarke points to—what sure as hell looks like—a hickey. “And your back,” she adds, and those look like a mix between fingerprints and nails. Her brows raise. “Are you hooking up with Bellamy again?” She’d heard bits about them being pretty rough with each other.

Raven clears her throat, and rearranges her hair to cover her back and neck before she turns and reaches for her shirt. “It’s nothing,” she shrugs, and slips it back over her head. “I should probably head back.”

 

**exhibit g.**

“Hey, Wick,” Clarke smiles at him when they end up standing beside one another. It’s time for the weekly Council updates, and their temporary outdoor meeting area is starting to fill up.

“Clarke,” Wick nods, and crosses his arms. “How’s it going?”

Clarke gives a half shrug. “It’s going.” She catches sight of Raven talking to her mom up by the front of the group and nods with her chin. “I haven’t seen you and Raven hanging out much anymore.”

Wick gives a small chuckle. “Yeah, she’s been pretty busy lately.” He looks over at her and his smile fades a bit. “You know, ‘cause…” His brows furrow at Clarke’s blank stare. “We’re not really hanging out these days.”

“Oh,” Clarke says, and looks back to Raven, still talking quietly with Abby. “I’m sorry to hear that. How come?”

Wick looks at her for a long moment, before his eyes start to light up, his lips twitch. “I wasn’t really what she was looking for.”

 

**exhibit h.**

“You look nice,” Clarke says, standing in the doorway to her mom’s room. Abby looks up at her, fingers stilled on the end of her braid—not messy, highly unusual these days—and smiles.

“Thank you,” she says, and doesn’t say more, though her tone is easy, loving. They’re moving past the awkwardness of Clarke’s absence.

“Where are you going?” Clarke asks, and sits on the edge of Abby’s bed.

There’s a long pause, and then Abby ties off her braid. If she didn’t know better, she’d say her mom had a date. Which makes her feel conflicted, honestly. About her dad, about her mom, about Kane (she assumes).

Abby turns, and comes to stand in front of Clarke, that gentle look in her eyes that makes Clarke feel so guilty these days. Her brows furrow just a bit, and then she’s cupping Clarke’s cheek and smiling down at her. “I’m so glad to have you back. You know that, right?”

“Mom,” Clarke starts to pull back, and Abby’s hand falls to her side. Clarke breathes out. “I know,” and it’s as close as she’ll ever get to acknowledging how badly she hurt Abby by leaving.  _She had to._

There’s a small clink when Abby’s wrist falls to the metal button on the corner of her jeans, and Clarke notices the bracelet her mom has on, a single washer looped through with string on either side, the washer laying flat against her skin.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” she says, and Clarke’s almost certain it’s a date.

 

**exhibit i.**

Clarke knocks on Raven’s door, and waits a moment, hearing sound.

After what feels like a full minute, Raven tugs the door open a bit, and breathes out, a little hard. “Yeah?”

“Sinclair’s looking for you, he’s got a project he needs some help with.” Raven nods, and brushes her hair back from her face. It’s rumpled and a little tangled, and paired with the way Raven’s shoulders are moving with her breaths, Clarke just interrupted something intense.

Smirking a bit, Clarke gestures behind Raven with a nod. “Busy?” Raven raises her brows in silent confirmation, and Clarke purses her lips. “Fine, you get back to,” she makes a vague gesture, “I’ll tell Sinclair you’re a little tied up at the moment.”

Raven makes a weird little squeaking sound at the phrase, and then the door is shut in her face.

 

**exhibit j.**

“Are you happy?” Clarke asks in the otherwise silent room.

Abby is reading a medical file on her tablet, and she looks up at Clarke’s question. “Excuse me?”

Clarke stands up from her spot in a far chair, and sits on the other end of the couch from her mom, moving her feet toward the back of the couch so she can rest comfortably.

Things have improved between them, they’ve been spending more and more time together, and Abby’s stopped looking at her like she’s going to disappear if she blinks.

Cheeks pinking a bit, Clarke reasks her question, and feels like she’s about four years old and way out of her depth. “Are you happy? Lately you’ve been….” she trails off, and gestures vaguely as she adds, “preoccupied? It seems like—” she cuts herself off, takes a breath, and asks slowly, “Are you happy?”

Abby looks at her for a long moment, and then sets her tablet down in her lap. “Of course I am, Clarke,” she breathes, and smiles that painful smile that hurts and heals everything all at once. “I’m so glad you’re back, Clarke.” Her smile falls a little. “Those months you were gone were some of the hardest of my life.”

“I know,” Clarke says, and feels herself tear up when her mom cups her cheek. She wants to tell her she’s sorry, she wants to fix everything and it would be so nice if it was that simple. But it’s not, and she’s not sorry, she did what she had to do, and that’s what a leader does.

“I know,” she repeats, and puts her hand over Abby’s on her cheek. “But that’s not what I meant, mom. Are _you_  happy.” She doesn’t ask it this time, just says it. Because she needs to know. She’s not in charge of any of them anymore, doesn’t have any kind of power, but she can find out, she can make sure that the people she cares about are OK.

Abby drops her hand from Clarke’s face, and puts her forearms on her knees as she draws them up to her chest. Her wrists dangle over, the right still wearing that washer bracelet, and as Abby thinks she plays with it a little.

“I am,” she breathes out, a little tentative, but when she looks up at Clarke her smile is radiant.

 

**exhibit k.**

The Council is giving an announcement and Kane is speaking and Clarke isn’t really listening. Instead, she’s watching him. Watching the way he gestures to Abby when he talks about Medical, the way he smiles at her and his voice lowers.

She’s not his biggest fan, but she’s come around on him so much since the Ark. Besides, if he makes her mom happy, she’s going to be OK with it.

Kane continues on to talk about some of the mechanical issues, and Sinclair starts to gesture to Raven, standing in the front row next to Abby. There’s soft applause of gratitude at the mention of her fixes and improvements, and Abby reaches up to rub at her back slowly.

 

**exhibit l.**

It’s been a few weeks since Clarke started noticing Raven was hooking up with someone, and she still hasn’t been able to figure out who it is. So at lunch, she asks, “Do you guys know who Raven’s seeing?” looking around the table at Octavia, Lincoln, and Bellamy.

The Blakes stay silent, and Lincoln looks to Octavia to follow her lead.

Clarke’s eyes narrow playfully. “You guys know,” she says, and Bellamy starts to shovel food into his mouth. Octavia just stares at her, tight lipped, and Lincoln takes a long drink. “God, what’s with the secrecy?”

Octavia shrugs, and pops a berry into her mouth. “You should probably ask Raven,” she says a little too irritated, but Clarke catches a flash of sympathy on her face.

 

**exhibit m.**

Clarke hasn’t seen Raven in a few days, and it’s not like she’s the clingy type, but Raven is one of the only people she can stand to be around these days and she could go for some company.

Only, when she stops by Raven’s room, she doesn’t get an answer. She considers heading out to the waterfall for a while, but she kind of wants to be around people right now, and Octavia’s got her class—including Bellamy—running drills outside.

The garage is empty when she walks by, so she continues down the halls until she hits her mom’s rooms.

“Mom?” she asks as she knocks and opens the door. “Hey, do you want to—OH MY GOD!”

And just like that she’s blind. Maybe. She’s got her eyes squeezed shut so tight and her hands over them pressing harder that she can’t tell but good god, she hopes she is.

Because if she could go the rest of her life without ever,  _ever_  seeing her mom on top of her friend—clothing _horrifically_  missing—it would be too soon.

“Clarke!” her mom yells, and then there’s shuffling and the couch is creaking and then  _there’s zipping_. Implying things had been unzipped. Things on her mother and/or friend.

She’s pretty sure she’s going to hurl.

“What,” she keeps her eyes squeezed shut and shakes her head, not turning around. “Uh, what is going on?” She winces and holds up a hand over her shoulder. “And the answer had better do with a medical emergency involving body heat.”

She almost gags on the last words.

“Clarke,” Abby starts, and she can hear the clicking of her boots getting closer. She’s right behind Clarke. “I’m sorry you had to find out this way,” she says in the soothing mom voice that just makes Clarke feel five deeper levels of uncomfortable right now.

“ _Find out_?” Clarke’s eyes fly open and she turns around, breathing a sigh of relief that everything on both of them is covered up again. Raven comes to stand beside Abby—way too close, now that she knows to think it—and Clarke waves her hand between them. “Find out, as in, there is  _something_  to find out?

“As in, this isn’t something that just happened right now?”

Abby and Raven both look guilty, they start to shift toward one another like they need each other for support, and it’s looking an awful lot like they are going to confirm this isn’t something that just happened. Which means—

Oh. God. Oh  _god_. This is the thing that has been making her mom so happy and Raven—EW. Ew, ew,  _ew_. The person she caught Raven with that day, that was  _her mother_?

“I need to sit down,” Clarke says, face pale. Because it all starts clicking, starts adding up rapidly thanks to that brilliant, observant brain. The one that is now starting to tally up all the soft looks and small touches and smiles and the  _hickeys_  and the nail marks on Raven’s back and the way that everyone got so weird about—

“Am I the last to know?” she asks, and if she sounds like a child it’s because she’s hurt like one, not because she’s being immature about this.

Raven shifts behind Abby, and then puts a hand on her elbow. “Do you two want to…?” she asks quietly, privately, and worries her brow a bit like she wants to make sure Abby’s OK.

It takes a bit of the wind out of Clarke’s sails.

“That might be best,” Abby clears her throat, and sets her hand on top of Raven’s, her knuckles shifting as she squeezes Raven’s hand.

Clarke starts to settle a bit, still unhappy but somehow softer about it.

Raven grabs her bag and ducks out of the room, and then Abby sits on the couch. Gestures for Clarke to sit beside her.

“I thought you were dating Kane,” Clarke says, numbly, as she sits down. Abby watches her, but doesn’t respond, and so Clarke asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

It sounds more pathetic than she’d anticipated, but she can’t help it; it hurts. From what she can piece together, it seems like the entire camp knew. (Except, funnily enough, possibly Kane.)

Abby’s eyes narrow a little, her brow furrowed slightly. “I was scared, Clarke.”

“Of me?”

“Of losing you.” The words land like a punch to the gut, and Clarke leans back against the couch a bit. “I’ve lost you too many times when you’ve found out things you didn’t like about me,” she says, and Clarke wants to argue, to deny it. But she can’t, not really. “I didn’t want this to be one of them.

“For Raven, either,” she adds a little shy, and she begins the rub at the band of her bracelet. A washer bracelet—a gift from Raven.

Clarke sits quietly, just looks at the bracelet for a long moment. “You told me you were happy,” she murmurs, not exactly a question, but it lingers in the air.

“I was,” she answers quickly. Slower: “I am.”

This isn’t something she wants—obviously—and it’s uncomfortable to even think about, at least right now. But Abby continues to play with the simple jewelry, and when Clarke looks up at her mom she’s got this wistful smile hinting at her lips.

Clarke looks down a bit, and sees the necklace still hanging around her mom’s neck, too; her dad’s ring, not forgotten.

Clearing her throat a bit, Clarke licks her lips and does her best to sound easygoing, to sound like she’s moving on already, even if this is going to be a very, very long road for her: “I suppose I’d accepted  _this_ when I thought it was Kane. And I like Raven more than him.”

Abby smiles, ducks her head a little, and Clarke’s breath catches a bit because she’s seen that face before, she sees that—holy shit—this is  _something_ , something serious, because she gets this stupid smile when Clarke just says Raven’s name.

It’s too much, too fast, she can  _barely_  think about them holding hands without wanting to puke. So instead, she tilts her chin up and says, “But if I hear Raven call you a MILF even  _once_ , we’re going to have issues.”

Abby smiles before tempering it, and nodding seriously. “I think that’s fair.”

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from an anon on tumblr: "Could you write one where Clarke finds out about Abby and Raven? I love thinking about her reaction."


End file.
